The head of the virus institute in China’s Wuhan city denies any virus can leak out from his laboratories. But on the institute’s website it claims to be China’s main (indeed only) specialist centre in studying how viruses harm humans. So is it just coincidence that the Covid-19 pandemic started in this city?

By Paul Martin.

Wuhan, where the virus causing Covid-19 came from, is the only city in China that houses an institute specialising in viral pathology.

This is what the Institute boasts on its website. It describes itself as “the only institute specializing in virology, viral pathology and virus technology among 19 other biological and biomedical research institutes in Chinese Academy of Sciences.”

It also declares that it “possesses the key laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences for newly emerging and fulminating infectious disease pathogen and biosecurity“.

What therefore are the mathematical chances that the only Chinese institute dealing with how viruses cause illness just ‘happens by coincidence’ to be situated in the same city in China where Covid-19 was first detected in a hospital?

There is a one in well-over-a-hundred chance of it being a coincidence, since the total population of Wuhan city is just over 11 million, compared with the total population of the Peoples Republic of China, which is 1.393 billion. (2018 figures) [NOTE: Even if we were to make the dubious assumption that such viruses only get mutated and spread to humans in large cities, China has 12 other cities with populations over ten million, and 101 other cities where there are more than one million inhabitants. (2017 figures). There is no evidence to suggest that Wuhan is more densely populated or is more overcrowded than any of these other cities, or has closer proximity to animals or bats. In any case population density does not seem to increase the proportion or spread of Covid-19.]

In other words, based purely on statistics, it is extremely likely (more than 99 per cent likely) that some work at or by the Institute produced or used the virus causing human Covid-19.

Why then has this simple statistical fact not been obvious to most governments, to the (United Nations) World Health Organisation, and indeed to most journalists? On the basis of the statistics, the only serious question is not whether the Institute caused this virus to reach humans, but whether it did so by accident or on purpose.

The government-run institute’s laboratory chief has rejected claims that the coronavirus causing Covid-19 was synthesised at his lab and had somehow escaped.

On May 18 he gave an interview to a Chinese science magazine, which the Chinese regime paid to be distributed worldwide on the PR Newswire. Professor Yuan Zhiming, director of Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory listed what the PR handout headlined “Stringent protocols taken to avoid virus leaks“. That included leak-proof walls in the laboratories.

“Whenever personnel pass through the entrance and exit channels, their positive pressure protective suits are chemically disinfected using the chemical showers to ensure the safety of the passageways,” said the Professor.

He concluded: “The above technical protection measures ensure that viruses inside the lab cannot escape.”

If indeed the virus could not have escaped from the lab, or have been carried out on workers’ clothing or external surfaces, then the statistics would point to something worse: prior exposure of a human being or human beings who then went out of the lab with the virus already inside the body.

The idea that a human (or several humans) could deliberately have been made to breathe in the virus and then become part of a living (or dying) experiment is so revolting that it seems impossible. Or is it? China’s rulers have experimented on humans, albeit dead ones, in the past. After all, it is well established that there was (and perhaps still is) a practice in Communist China to harvest organs from executed prisoners not only for transplantation but also for experimentation.

The statistically most likely assumption, as we have shown, is it was a tragic accident, but stemmed from the Virological Institute.

For the record, here is the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s description of itself: (we have highlighted key phrases)

The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was established in 1956. It is the only institute specializing in virology, viral pathology and virus technology among 19 other biological and biomedical research institutes in CAS.

The research landscape of WIV has witnessed drastic changes, owing to the demands of the eco-social development of China and great challenges in virological science and technology. WIV’s traditional programs that focused on insect viruses and applied microbiology have expanded to include more diverse areas of interest, including molecular virology, the etiology and epidemiology of emerging infectious diseases, immunovirology, analytical pathogenic microbiology, and agricultural and environmental microbiology. Thanks to its dynamic research programs and capacity, the institute has developed two unrivaled research platforms in China, the China Center for Virus Culture Collection, and the National Mega Science Facility for Biosafety Containment. These facilities have tremendously reinforced WIV’s R&D capacity and will inevitably help advance the life sciences nationwide. The hard work of WIV has paid off with global visibility and international recognition, especially in terms of research on the baculovirus, the etiological origin of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus, and the discovery of numerous key regulators of innate immune signaling.

WIV has one state key laboratory, one CAS key laboratory, and one key Wuhan municipal laboratory. The State Key Laboratory of Virology (SKLV), established in 2004 and jointly supported by Wuhan University and WIV, focuses on basic research into various viruses. The CAS Key Laboratory of Agricultural and Environmental Microbiology (KLAEM), founded in 2010, focuses on fundamental microbiological studies of agricultural and environmental importance. The Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases of Wuhan, set up in 2012, focuses on basic and applied research on emerging infectious disease pathogens. WIV has different biosafety level laboratories for working on human pathogens, including 17 biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) labs, one animal BSL-2 (ABSL-2) lab and two BSL-3 labs. In addition, the first national BSL-4 laboratory is now under construction. This high-level biosafety laboratory signifies that WIV has an irreplaceable role to play in tackling emerging infectious diseases.

As a National International Collaboration Center, WIV promotes medium- and long-term international collaboration with organizations around the world. For example, WIV, in cooperation with Wageningen University in the Netherlands and France’s Montpellier 2 University, established the Joint Lab of Invertebrate Virology in 1998. WIV has also played a key role in the development of the CAS-African Research Center in Nairobi. WIV is in charge of setting up the microbiology and epidemiology lab, which will specialize in pathogen detection, the epidemiology of infectious diseases, and prevention and control of infectious diseases.

WIV will spare no effort to to conduct fundamental, strategic and forward-looking R&D with the support of its world-class faculty and dedicated administrative and technical support staff. WIV is determined to become one of the world’s leading institutions in virological and microbiological research, a training base for scholars in the field, and a powerful engine of biotech transfer by the year 2020.